Here’s how it works: Inferno uses four frequencies spread out over 2 to 5 kHz.
The idea behind it is that unlike a regular siren, these particular frequencies have
a uniquely disturbing effect on people (and presumably cats, dogs and any other living thing).
At 123 dB, it’s loud, but not significantly louder than any other alarm system.
The advantage, according to Dr. Goldman, is the combination of frequencies.
The human ear just doesn’t like it. I agree, I really didn’t like it.

That’s all well and good, but we’re still talking about
a weapon that can be defeated with a 10-cent pair of
earplugs.

Feb 11, 2008

Hometracked ran a
piece last week
on the abuse of the infamous
Auto-Tune
pitch-correction software where the effects were identified on recent pop hits. The recording industry just excels at finding ways
to dig its own grave.

Funny thing was that I noticed most of these effects on
the various songs that Des points out, although I (like some of
the commentators on the site) thought that it may have been
an “artistic” choice on some of those songs.

A rant on Bad Science
about the portrayal of technical subjects in the media:

I know I’m wrong to care. On the BBC news site “crews were hopeful the
20m cubic litres of water could be
held back and not breach the dam wall”. And that’ll be a struggle, since “cubic litres”
are a nine-dimensional measuring system, so the hyperdimensional
water could breach the dam in almost any one of the five other dimensions you haven’t noticed yet.

Feb 01, 2008

We should all agree that a good sound system cannot fix a bad acoustical space.
Neither can a great one. No amount of amplifiers and speakers can “fix” a large
room with insufficient acoustical absorption, no matter how loud it plays or well its
pattern is controlled. Even with the most exotic line arrays, the room will sound far
better if properly treated to optimize the reverberation time relative to performance
expectations.

Yet for years American architects have wrongly believed
that noise and reverberation problems can be cured with exotic
sound reproduction systems. They can’t.
There is no $300,000 sound system that sounds good in a tiled restroom.
Nor is there a three dollar sound system that does.

…

One needn’t look very far to understand why it’s difficult to
communicate in most modern buildings in the United States- it’s the fault of our
architects. Their training is lousy.

Many American architects live exclusively in a visual world.
It’s often all about the pretty picture in a magazine and on the web.
Many European architects live in a visual and aural world and
realize that the design of a facility affects the quality of sound reproduction.

Our architectural schools do not teach the subject properly.
One of our more prestigious architectural schools offers a total of
123 total classes in its curriculum. Only one of them,
“Design for the Luminous and Sonic Environment”
appears to have an emphasis on the aural environment.
Even in that one we take a back seat to lighting. Typical.

But there are no codes that regulate acoustical comfort under normal conditions. And as a result, we have citizens
complaining that they can’t understand their elected representatives at public meetings.

Chano Santamaria at Reel 2 Real published a nice
breakdown of the frequency range of various musical instruments and how equalization can be used to
accentuate a particular characteristic of an instrument.

Equalization often causes more problems then it solves, but it is sometimes unavoidable - if you’re
going to use it, you may as well be informed.